


thorn and patch

by unicyclehippo



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22586020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: After the events in the witch's hut, the Nein have got to go and quick. Only, there's no time to ask what Jester has given up and Beau is very worried.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 33
Kudos: 461





	thorn and patch

Such is Jester’s force of will that when she says _let’s go_ and _let’s go_ and _we need to get the fuck out of here right now let’s_ go _,_ her friends listen.

‘Jester,’ Beau calls, and she takes a flinching step back at the force of Jester’s returned glare.

‘No. Not right now. We’re _going_ ,’ Jester says, and so they do.

One by one, as fast as they dare, the Nein take the path they had made out of the walled ring of brambles; fleeing out into the forest – into the biting mist that slinks through the trees, into the sucking swamps, into a den of yellow-eyed wolves that stand taller at the shoulders than Yasha – they don’t stop until the treeline of the green vale meets them and spits them stumbling out the other side. They climb to the barren top of the rainbow-layered mountain overlooking the town that hugs the other side of the ridge.

‘A – moment?’ Fjord begs, hand pressed to his side. His breath comes ragged from the quick pace and he grimaces, squints against the sweat and grime, looks ashamed for a moment until he sees that he isn’t the only one.

Caleb is trembling on his legs like a newborn colt so Beau steps forward, curls a protective arm around his waist and pulls until he is leaning almost his full weight against her. Nott stands shakily against his other side and swigs from her flask. No one says anything about it. Caduceus holds his staff with his off hand, tries to hide his fucked up hand with the long sleeve draped down over it so no one notices or puts up a fuss about him but he’s the first to sit without waiting for anyone to agree and he begins a slow, murmuring prayer that begins to spark and grow, fill them with his familiar cool power.

Jester holds the straps of her vibrant pack, tucks her fingers tight around the straps, and stares back into the forest. She’s smiling but the eyes over that smile don’t match—too dark, and tight with worry.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Okay, but I _don’t_ think we should stay here long.’

‘Back to Ka– to town, then,’ Caleb suggests with a nod to Jester that she returns after only a moment, pulling her eyes from the treeline.

‘In a moment,’ Caduceus says, echoing Fjord’s request. ‘Ten minutes. Drink some water, all of you. Anyone who needs extra healing when I’m done with this, let me know.’

No one does let him know that because they’re all equally fucked up today and so, when their ten minutes are over, he flexes his hand—good as new—and climbs wearily to his feet. Caduceus makes his own way over to Yasha to finish closing the gash on her side—dire wolves don’t like to have their chewtoys taken away, as it turns out—and from her to Fjord, who smiles a little sheepishly, steps closer to get his healing. As puckered acid scars fade and heal and the punctures of great teeth close, the bruising bites Fjord earned begin to fade, running quickly through the sunset spectrum ending in a muddied yellow-green bruise.

‘I can sleep that off,’ Fjord promises, and twists left to right and left again to test out the full range of his torso, no longer shaken to pieces. He nods his thanks. ‘’preciate it, Cad.’

‘Aw, it’s nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing. _Thank_ you.’

‘Thank the Wildmother too.’

Fjord smiles warmly. ‘Alright. I will.’

With that, Caduceus wanders to the back of the pack. Beau glances up from the mud path to him and his outstretched hand. ‘I’m fine.’

‘The blood says otherwise,’ Caduceus tells her, voice mild.

‘ _Leave_ it, Deuces.’

The bite to her tone has him backing off, equal parts accommodating and judgemental. She can feel his eyes heavy on her, dark and steady, as she tries not to flinch with every step down the path. What she can’t tell him, what she doesn’t _want_ to tell him, is that the pain is the only thing keeping her together right now. It fucking hurts, yeah, but the hurt is beyond familiar, the hurt is beyond grounding—the hurt reminds her that she _has_ a body, keeps her from falling back into numb and nothing.

The shitty part of it is that now that they’re out of the forest and she isn’t on high alert, the pain is no defence like the numb was and she has nothing left in her to counter the cold-fingered fear that has started to claw its way from the pit of her stomach up her throat.

Beau lets her breath out shakily and shifts her grip on her bo, leans more heavily on it as they traverse the mudded slopes.

* * *

They march through the wet slop back to the Gem Hearth.

‘I’ll get our rooms,’ Yasha says, because someone has to be the first to break the silence.

At the same moment, in a tone so pointed and sharp as to be more knife than name, Beau says, ‘Jester.’

Jester tenses and doesn't turn to look at her. She doesn't move, either, and the rest of the Nein shift uncomfortably.

‘We should – see if they have any baths,’ Caleb says quietly.

‘They’re not going to have baths,’ Caduceus rumbles.

‘We’ll just…’ Fjord hikes a thumb over his shoulder. Holds the door open for Nott.

‘Buy you a whiskey for being an asshole?’

‘Done. Can’t hardly believe that was just last night. Fuck me, it feels like forever ago.’

‘You’re _not_ my type,’ she tells him, and it feels like a minor miracle as the immense tension breaks and Fjord laughs his rare laugh, a genuine belly laugh.

‘No? Sure about that? You _are_ buying me a drink.’

Caleb follows quickly after them, pausing only to pat Beau’s shoulder once. Caduceus tries one more time to heal Beau but she cuts him a glare that sends him inside, sighing.

Jester eyes the open door obviously but she turns eventually to face Beau. ‘We’re not going in?’ she asks, voice light and sweet and if Beau hadn’t known her for – what? A _year_ now? – she wouldn’t have caught the anxious curl of her tail behind her or the way her fingers tighten around the straps of her backpack. But she has known Jester, and she does see it, and the cold in her gut creeps further.

Beau can’t get her words to cooperate so, instead of talking, she jerks her head to the side and limps away, around the inn to the alleyway that runs alongside it. The alley is not terribly narrow but the mud is thicker here, no one caring to shovel it away.

‘ _Beau_ ,’ Jester calls after her in that exasperated way she does. Two syllables, Bo- _wuh_. She’s always liked it, the way it makes her name sound different. _New_. All Jester’s.

She shakes the thought away and focuses past the sharp sting of a badly sprained knee and acid burns she should, eventually, let Cad take a crack at.

‘Great. Now we’re in a stinky alley.’

Beau turns. It’s all coincidence but she turns in time to watch as Jester steps into the alley with her and, as she does, watches as the deep shadows cast by the roof and nearby lanterns overtakes her. Beau’s breath catches sharply; all the fear, all the worry, _everything_ she’s been pushing down since Jester stepped out of that fucking hut tightens like a ball of frozen ice too large for the container its in and Beau is two fucking seconds from _shattering_ like frozen glass.

‘What—‘ Her voice cracks around the word. Beau can’t deal with fear right now, can’t deal with the freezing fear and the way her skin _burns_ in jarring contrast, so she grits her teeth and tries again. Forces the words out rough. ‘What did you trade? What did you give her? God, Jester—‘ and her voice cracks again around her friend’s name, ‘what did you _do_?’ Jester doesn’t say anything and Beau can’t see enough of her, not in this shadow, so she reaches for her. Now, out of sight of everyone else, Beau gives into the urge to pat Jester down—spin her in place, ignoring the yelp of annoyance, so she can _see_ – horns, tails, legs, hands – and Beau takes those hands in both of her own and _squeezes_ to make _sure_ , yeah, they’re real, not an illusion. She might’ve been entirely out of it after she’d left the hut but she remembers hearing something about that, remembers hearing Jester talk about offering her _hands_. They’re real, though, and grip Beau back hard. Beau drags in a shuddering breath, almost relieved, but she doesn’t dare give into that yet; instead, she lifts a hand to tilt Jester’s head up. It’s stupid but maybe if she looks hard enough, long enough, she can see what is missing, what Jester might have given up.

She can’t. It’s impossible, obviously, but rationality is floating somewhere to her left along with her good sense and brain. It’s gut impulse that fills Beau now, specifically _fear_ , and she spirals in it, dizzy with it, and takes Jester by the shoulders and shakes her the tiniest bit.

‘What have you—I was _ready_ ,’ she tells her, eyes wide, eyes wild. ‘I was prepared to do it—I was ready—Nott just had to go in there and _ask for it_. Why d—what did you _do_?’

Once when Beau was younger, fourteen or so, she had ventured into the broken fields south of the town, the true badlands of Kamordah, where no amount of work could get anything to grow. She had been walking for some time before she finally registered the slow hissing beneath her feet and it had been only luck that let her avoid the explosion from the vent.

The first sign should have been the way Jester’s breath hitches. The way her shoulders wrench back and close together, her chin coming up in defiance and – oh. _Anger._ Jester begins to hiss before she speaks. Jester’s eyes _flare_ with the build up of heated words, and Beau—numb, afraid, _cold_ —cannot step out of the way before she does. Knocking Beau’s hand off her face, off her shoulder, she _shoves_ Beau, who feels the impact dull against her ribs. Off-balance, she can’t stop from stumbling back.

A hiss begins to gather and grow behind sharp teeth. ‘You wanna know what I traded? You wanna know? It wasn’t my whole _life_.’

‘Jes-‘

She throws up a hand like she’s batting Beau’s words away. ‘I wasn’t sending myself into _exile_ ,’ she hisses, ‘so some _bitch_ could feed off the misery of _everyone_ who loves me. So she could – could _drool_ over how much our hearts break –‘ Beau flinches as the word cracks in Jester’s throat. ‘ – when we look around and see that _you. Aren’t. There_. God!’ Jester laughs, a bitter hard seed of a laugh she nearly chokes on. ‘How can you be _so_ smart and _so_ stupid?’

Jester sucks in a breath. Closes her eyes, adjusts her head on her shoulders. When she speaks again, it is a little more quietly, a little more measured, but it doesn’t seem to do much to dismiss her anger; if anything, Beau can read her anger more easily. Jester’s tail drags low and slow behind her before _lashing_ to the side as though reacting to some offensive thought, and her eyes are fixed and fiercely bright. Beau can’t look away. Can only squim under the focused attention, a beetle under the magnifying glass.

‘I offered my drawing.’ It would be a grave mistake to think her voice soft. It is quiet, yes, and her accent dulls the sharpest of sounds, but Beau doesn’t think _soft_. She thinks of scales and something moving slowly in deep water, hidden, waiting to strike.

Jester’s head tilts a notch to the side. She doesn’t blink. Hasn’t for a while. She watches Beau carefully from beneath hooded eyes as she says, ‘She wanted to take my hands.’

Fear sticks in Beau’s throat like a bone when she tries to swallow. She drops her eyes to Jester’s hands, fights to remind herself she _felt_ them, they’re _real_ , she still has them.

‘My actual _hands_ , Beau. Do you know how fucked up that is?’

‘You –‘

‘ _I’m not finished_.’

Beau doesn’t flinch. Her body is wound too tight for that.

‘It’s fucked up,’ Jester says to her own question. ‘ _So_ fucked. And I – I knew she was never not gonna be hungry for people to _hurt_.’

Jester stops. Her mouth folds, lips pulling tight like a coin purse, like she’s trying to stop herself from being sick all over the alley.

Beau’s stomach hurts in sympathy. Then burns, ice-cold. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’ Jester glares at her for speaking, so hard that Beau nearly stops. But. But Beau was willing to give up _everything_ for them, for her, so there’s no reason not to continue. She’ll lose ‘em all anyway. She wants her answer. ‘What did you give her?’

‘A cupcake.’

‘A – what?’

‘I gave her a cupcake. I was nice to her,’ Jester tells her through gritted teeth, ‘and I asked if she wouldn’t pretty please change her mind. She broke the curse for half a cake.’

Beau’s world tilts sideways. She can feel her feet on the ground still but it’s like someone turned her eyes upside down – she feels like she’s about to puke and also maybe float away because – that doesn’t – it doesn’t _fit_ , it doesn’t make _sense_ and she’s so fucking dizzy with it.

‘That’s not –‘

Jester steps forward, strikingly fast, cutting her off. There wasn’t much space between them already but there was some; Jester fills this now, slides close, and Beau’s thoughts whirl out of her head and the only ones that stick are stupid. She thinks _pretty_ and _she’s getting her boots dirty, stamped all over with Kamordah filth now_ and _uh oh_ , and when the last thought catches up and _slams_ down into her skull Beau tries to retreat but the wall of the next house is right behind her, stopping her. Shoulders and back smack into the baked clay walls and the sharp edge of the wood beam. Jester’s eyes are cold.

‘You can tell yourself,’ Jester says, and Beau would have thought the hissing words were Infernal if not for the fact that she can understand each of them, loud and clear, ‘all night long that what you were gonna give her was noble and brave and – and _good_ but you’re the one who gave us the speech on chasing a destiny and about cycles of _shit_ and what you were gonna _do_ , Beau,’ Jester’s expression starts to fracture, ice cracking, the breaking point her trembling chin. She takes a deep breath. Refreezes over hard and smooth and very cold once more. ‘What you were gonna give her was going to hurt all of us. You aren’t a hero today. You’re a _coward_ , and I don’t want to talk to you right now.’

Jester turns on her heel and leaves her there in the alley.

By the time Beau has gathered herself and followed, the third of three rooms is closed and locked, and most of her friends are leaning against the bar. She joins them.

‘So.’ Fjord slides a whiskey her way. ‘How’d that go?’

Beau takes it. Down it. Says around a gasp, ‘Great. She’s fine, apparently.’

‘That’s what she told us,’ he nods. Drums thick fingers on the shining bartop. ‘You believe her?’

Beau fills her glass again. Knocks it back. Gathers enough of herself—everything she has worked _so hard_ to be—around herself to answer him, to stand around the bar and talk with them all and pretend to be okay. It’s tattered, _she_ is tattered, from where she took it up in her fists and tore it up, offered it up to the hungry witch, but she gathers it anyway and knows her friends—her _family_ —will look past the damage.

‘I’ve been ordered to,’ she tells him with a sliver of a smile.

Fjord returns it, eyes kind. ‘Sounds about right.’

‘She…did, though. Seem okay.’

‘Weren’t missing any hands?’

Beau flinches. ‘No.’

‘Good. Good.’ He scratches at his chin. ‘Seems weird that it’s the most we can hope for, huh?’

Beau lets her eyes crawl across the bar, empty except for them and the bartender. Her eyes unfocus, pull up an image of the town she memorized years ago, walking its shitty roads until it was ingrained in her, until _this_ is the place she thinks of when they make their way down muddied paths, until _this_ is the place she thinks of when Caleb pulls phosphorous and sulphur into his hands, _this_ is the place she thinks of whenever someone pulls out a bottle of wine. She returns to herself slowly and doesn’t bother with a smile this time.

‘Welcome to Kamordah,’ she mutters, and lifts a toast to nothing in particular.

* * *

Beau is drunk.

She’s drunk and she needs to talk to Jester.

The conversation had, surprises of all surprises, done nothing to reassure her—a _cupcake_? Had Jester lied to Beau? Why would she lie about something so important?—and so, long after Fjord had left for bed, long after Caleb and Nott had gone, and not too terribly long after Yasha had decided to walk outside into the rain, Beau had swallowed one last drop of the whiskey and clumsily picked the lock on her room, the one she had been sharing with Jester. She steps inside, closing it after her.

With all the care of someone who is attempting to bond with a moorbounder, someone who knows that one false move will see them right to the floor and then maybe dead, Beau picks her way across the room. Jester has taken the bed—thrown the gross mattress to the other side of the room—and Beau kneels beside her, knees cracking painfully on the stone when she misjudges her own height and the height of the floor, which is being very uncooperative and shifting rapidly. Ignoring the pain, Beau holds out her hand—sends a mental message to it as Caleb to his familiar to be _gentle_ and _careful_ and not to fuck this up—and sets it on Jester’s shoulder. She shakes, very gently.

‘Jes?’ Beau watches her hand carefully. At the first sign of her fingers wanting to stroke Jester’s skin, follow the line of her pretty, pretty tattoos, she sends them into a tapping pattern instead onto the knock of Jester’s shoulder. ‘Jes, can you – I nee—Jes?’

The other girl stirs a little. Her nose scrunches and she yawns, rolls her eyes open. ‘Mm. Beau?’

‘Hey,’ she breathes. Her heart slams hard in her chest, hard enough to send her back onto her butt and she laughs. Bites down on the sound guiltily. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know you don’t wanna talk to me, I’m sorry. I know that, I _do_ , an’ I totally – to’ly respect that, I just – ‘

Jester sits up with a gasp; Beau yanks her hand away fast in case it’s because of _her_ but Jester catches her hand before it can go too far, before she can scramble away the way she wants to. She pulls Beau _in_. Lifts a hand to Beau’s cheek and wipes. When she pulls her hand back, Beau is confused to find that her finger is wet.

‘Beau. You’re crying.’

Beau knew that, actually. She’d forgotten, but she’d known that. ‘Oh – yeah – it’s – don’t worry about that.’ Embarassing. She swipes more roughly at her cheeks than Jester had—her hands are numb with the sheer amount of alcohol she’s had to consume to feel even a bit fucked up but her face is numb too so it doesn’t hurt, won’t hurt until tomorrow morning, but she’ll have earned it no doubt. ‘Don’t wor—I gotta know,’ Beau says, dragging her mind back to what is important. ‘And then I promise I’ll leave you be, I’m - just –‘

Beau curls her hand around the beam of the bed. Pulls herself forward, off her ass and onto her knees again; holds herself balanced so that Jester doesn’t have to hold onto her. She tilts her head, moves until she can find Jester’s eyes with only the stormlight outside to help her.

‘You’re really okay?’ she rasps. ‘You didn’t give her anything?’

‘ _Beau_ ,’

‘ _Promise_ me, Jes,’ Beau demands, which she can only do because she’s drunk, drunk, drunk. Her throat _burns_ and it’s not from alcohol but from swallowing back a lot of words she wants to say like, _I wanted to go_ , and, _If anything happened to you I’d straight up die_ , and _Why is it that when I try to love my family, I manage to fuck it up?_ ‘Promise me you didn’t trade her anything, Jessie. I’ve been comin’ up with the _worst_ fuckin’ things you could’ve given her an’ – god, Jes, I need to _know_.’

Jester is drenched in shadow. Beau tries not to take it as a portent. It helps when the other girl moves and the stormlight—purples and greens, lightning and hail—highlights the roundness of her cheeks, bathes her in a light that is just _pretty_ , not creepy or evil or anything like that.

‘Pretty,’ Beau murmurs, and has to hope belatedly when her head catches up to her tongue that the word was covered by the grumble of thunder and the way Jester is moving on the bed.

She moves so that her legs are over the edge, back in the corner, turning the narrow bed into something more like a wide bench. Jester tries to pull Beau up next to her but Beau is drunk enough to make unsaid things difficult. Jester tugs and tugs at her again and then _heaves_ , but by the third time it has finally clicked what Jester wants and Beau tries to be helpful with it and stand. Jester’s strength nearly sends her flying, nearly sends her crashing into the bench once Beau’s body decided to stop being a dead weight.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Jester giggles as Beau barely stops herself from impacting face-first against the wall, hand smacking into it first. ‘Beau, sit with me.’

Jester tugs her down. Beau obliges. Folds herself like a smith’s bellows into the space next to Jester, air escaping her just the same. Her limbs move without needing any input from her brain—legs cross, one knee lifting for her to drape her arm over it, and the other arm, she realizes as her sluggish brain runs through the checklist, is still being held by Jester.

Beau opens her hand. Taps her fingers to Jester’s elbow and feels cold hands unwind from her forearm, allowing her to move. Not far. She just wants to hold Jester’s hand properly, so she does. Watches in a daze as familiar fingers—her own—slip between Jester’s. Pull away again so she can feel the drag of skin. She shifts closer, not really paying attention to the distance between them so much as knowing she wants to be _quiet_ and the best way to do that is to be _close_. And then she’s slipping sideways and her shoulder is knocking into Jester’s and they’re close. Really close. Her fingers brush Jester’s and it seems like fantastically difficult work to lace them, stack them one on one.

‘I keep – thinking about your hands,’ Beau tells her, staring at them.

It’d be easy for Jester to make a joke of it. Beau thinks she even sees the mischief in her eyes, the lightning spark of playfulness as it occurs to her, even sleepy, even sad. But that’s not what Beau meant, not really, and she’s still really fucking sad so before Jester can make the joke, she continues, forces her tongue to cooperate with the words before her drunken mind can catch up and realize, hang on we’re making a fool of ourself here.

‘I kept thinkin’ – what if – what if, y’know, she wanted your hands like you said but you’re _smart_ so you said just – here, just,’ Beau waves her other hand out like a lordling scattering coin. ‘Take my – my drawing, my music, my mending. Leave the hands, take everything else. Leaving you with empty hands, hollow hands, sad hands. And the more I thought about it, Jessie, the sadder I got and I just – I had to come in here and _check_ and I know you said – you asked me to stay away,’

‘I _didn’t_.’

‘Uh,’

‘I said I didn’t want to _talk_ to you,’ Jester tells her. ‘And only right _then_. I was…really mad.’

Even if she weren’t drunk, there would be nothing that Beau could do to stop the way her entire face floods with affection, with adoration. She feels it, the way her entire face crinkles with her grin.

‘Yeah,’ she sighs, positively fucking smitten.

Jester shakes her head but doesn’t comment on that. Maybe she didn’t see.

‘I didn’t give her any of that.’

Beau leans a little harder into her shoulder. ‘Just the cupcake.’

‘Mhm. And a good memory,’ she says.

There’s a sly note to the words that Beau thinks means something but she can’t figure out _what_. A possibility occurs to her and Beau stiffens. Eyes wide, she pulls back a little. Fear starts to burn the alcohol out of her system.

‘A memory?’

‘Mhm.’

‘What m– okay – okay – we can get it back, that’s – okay we can _go_ to her and get it back and – do you know what the memory was? That’s not important, I guess,’ Beau allows, shoving her curiosity aside, shaking her hand free of Jester’s, and she tells herself that what the memory _was_ isn’t as important as telling the others and rousing them to go back into the fucking forest and getting it _back_ , and -

A tail curls around her ankle before Beau can make it more than a few inches from Jester. A hand grabs at her waist, her belt, and _pulls_ her back. Beau stumbles, trips back into the soft of Jester’s embrace with an accompanying _oof_ from both of them as she lands.

Beau struggles a little but she’s caught. Doesn’t struggle anymore when she realizes that she has been caught by Jester.

‘Beau, Beau, _no_ , it’s _okay,_ ’ she says, quickly, soothingly. ‘I gave her a memory of her _own_ , not one of mine. It’s _okay_.’

‘I’m confused.’

‘I … used a spell,’ Jester confesses, very quickly. Her voice is thick with something Beau struggles to identify. It sounds familiar, just not on Jester, and when she expands her pool of experience it snaps quick into place: _shame_. ‘I made her think she had such a nice conversation with me that she agreed to just … break the curse.’

Beau stares.

‘I – you were going to _leave_ ,’ Jester says and then very quickly after that, maybe because it’s a list but Beau feels weird, like somehow her leaving was the only reason until Jester pulled in some others. ‘Nott offered _war_. Yasha – I don’t know what Yasha was gonna give her but,’

‘A lot.’

‘You think so?’

Beau nods. Quickly, because she’s quickly becoming not-drunk again and Jester deserves to hear this before she gets scared again and stops talking at all, she says, ‘Some people – we’re really good at misery. Better us than y– than other people, y’know?’

Jester looks at Beau for a very long time. Then, her hands—her Jester hands, the hands that belong entirely to Jester and not to a hag because Jester is so fucking clever and _good_ —come up to rest on either side of Beau’s face and she says, words slow and heavy and sweet,

‘I think happiness would look very nice on you, Beau.’

Beau doesn’t know about that.

She shrugs. She isn’t thinking—or she _is_ , just about the wrong thing—when she turns her head into Jester’s hand and lifts her own, captures Jester’s hand between her hand and her lips, and presses a gentle kiss into the centre of Jester’s palm.

‘Oh.’ The word escapes Jester so very softly. ‘Good thing I didn’t give her my hands,’ she whispers, dazed, ‘or I never would’ve got – that.’

Beau hates that idea, _hates_ it, hates the idea of that _bitch_ having Jester’s _hands_ – her beautiful, art-making, massage-giving, ring-wearing, magic-making, poking prodding prying _pretty_ hands. She kisses Jester’s hand again, pours everything she can into the chaste touch, and then bring the other up to her mouth, kisses that palm too. But it isn’t enough, so Beau turns her hand over and kisses her knuckles too, each brush of her lips feather light until it touches skin and then she can’t help but press closer to her.

Jester, as though revelling in the sensation of having hands, frees the one that isn’t being worshipped and lifts it to trace over the arch of Beau’s eyebrow. Tripping little strokes follow the line to the scar that bisects it, swirls across and around the vulnerable point of her temple, before dragging down Beau’s cheek to the sharp point beneath her ear and tap, tapping their way down her jaw.

Beau turns Jester’s hand over again, kisses her palm once more before she drags her lips, her cheek, over the swell of Jester’s palm to where her pulse hammers under the thin skin of her wrist. She presses one last kiss there before lingering, taking in the familiar note of lavender, stronger here where Jester applies the smallest bit most days.

Jester curls all fingers but her first into the palm of her free hand.

Lifts it, grazing so lightly over Beau’s chin, to the corner of Beau’s lips. Touches her finger there, and to the smallest part of Beau’s bottom lip. She does so gently, so gently that Beau might have thought she imagined it except for the sensation—tingling, an electric spark that remains, clinging to her skin.

Beau gasps.

Glances up with hooded eyes into the fading dark, to meet Jester’s eyes with hers, and instead of kissing her again she opens her mouth – hot breath puffing against the sensitive skin and Jester’s hand twitches in Beau’s – and grazes blunt teeth over her pulse, pulling the skin there into a dull _pinch_.

It earns her a sound – part surprise, part enjoyment, part confusion. Judging from the tiny frown that creases her brow, the sound is unfamiliar to Jester – but not to Beau. It’s the kind of sound that magnifies the electric spark and sends it scattering throughout her entire body, makes her shiver with it, and as it courses through her it is shock enough to make Beau stiffen and pull back.

She lowers Jester’s hand gently away from her.

‘No – wai - um. Beau?’

‘I’m–’ She clears her throat. Lifts shaking hands to her head, presses the flesh of her palms to her eyes until colours burst behind her lids. ‘Drunk. A bit. I shouldn’t’ve done – _that_. I’m s –’

‘I didn’t mind.’

Beau doesn’t know what to say to that, and now that she’s considerably _less_ drunk than she had been, she doesn’t have the courage to ask if – if when Jester says she doesn’t _mind_ , if that means that she would _like_ Beau to do it again. Or more. Or something else.

She doesn’t even know the words to _begin_ asking that stuff.

She drags her hands down her face. Stares nervously at Jester over them. ‘I’m drunk,’ she says again, voice strained. ‘Not heaps, not anymore, but I _am_ , and,’

‘I’m not.’ Jester lifts her hand. Pulls first one of Beau’s hands down and then the other and returns to her face a third time to trace Beau’s lips again. She puts her whole hand on Beau’s cheek and _drags_ her thumb over Beau’s bottom lip, eyes widening ever so slightly when Beau shudders. ‘What if you weren’t?’ she asks, thumb tapping at the corner of her lips.

Beau’s smile crooks into Jester’s palm. ‘I’d do whatever you wanted.’

‘You do that anyway. Mostly.’

Beau’s smile grows. ‘I guess I do.’

Jester’s eyes run across the line of Beau’s smile, back and forth a few times. She scratches her thumbnail gently over the dimple it makes. ‘ _I’m_ not drunk,’ she says, a second time now.

The storm has passed and it is dawnlight now that is slinking up through the window.

‘I’m not drunk,’ Jester says, third time the charm. ‘Can I –‘

Beau holds herself still. ‘ _Anything_ ,’ she tells Jester, voice hoarse.

For a moment, Jester only touches her. Trips her fingers over the cool metal of Beau’s earrings, which shift where they have been sitting for years now, and it’s a strange sensation to be aware of them but not unpleasant. Her fingers push back through Beau’s undercut and into her hair properly, pulling the ribbon free so Beau’s hair comes down around her shoulders. Nails scrape gently over her scalp and press, tilting Beau’s head closer. Jester shifts on the plank of a bed, moves until she’s closer, which is apparently not close enough until Beau has her leg kicked over Jester’s and is side-on to Jester, engulfed in the other girl, who just _hugs_ her for a moment. Beau can do this, can relax into the hug and pull in the smell of Jester, sweet and flowery and familiar – even mixed with the faint odour of moulding straw.

‘I want,’ Jester says, and trails off.

And Beau realises that the hug has done nothing to settle her down, actually, as the words make everything clench tight in her gut. She nudges her nose against Jester’s cheek but otherwise stays still. Holds herself patient, holds herself in check.

_Jester_ would _tease_ , she finds herself thinking. Everything is a joke to the girl, everything affords an opportunity to delight, to _win_. Why would this be any different?

Jester leans in close. Her hand is cool again on Beau’s cheek. They’re close enough now that Beau can only see her in patches – the freckles over her nose, the flush of round cheeks, the place where her night shirt has fallen to the side and one shoulder shimmers with diamond dust and the dawn. And then Jester licks her lips and Beau’s eyes are drawn to the movement, linger over the sheen left behind on her lips, the way they’re still somewhat parted.

‘Beau.’

‘Yeah.'

‘Can I kiss you?’

Beau doesn’t know how she got here. How she got from the girl in the forest ready to bargain away her family, _Jester_ , to this place right now. She would be afraid that it was some kind of cruel trick if not for the fact that this is nothing like—is far better than—the dreams she’s had about this.

‘Yeah,’ Beau breathes again, holding herself so still she can barely draw the requisite breath into her lungs.

Still she waits, for so long Beau’s back is screaming with the effort of holding herself up and a beam of light from the window shifts noticeably from her foot up to her calf, and then Jester closes that final distance. Presses their lips together in a sweet, chaste kiss.

Beau gives her the lead. Beau would give her everything, and she goes slow and molten kinds of content and lets herself be kissed and kissed and kissed.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im unicyclehippo on tumblr as well, feel free to swing on by & say hi or send me a prompt x


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